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“Outbreaks of measles and cholera are striking down Somali children already weakened by hunger, resulting in dozens of new fatalities,” the Guardian reports (Rice, 8/13). According to the WHO, “181 people have died from suspected cholera cases in a single hospital in Mogadishu, and there have been several other confirmed cholera outbreaks across the country,” the New York Times writes (Gettleman, 8/12). UNICEF spokesperson Marixie Mercado “said Friday that tens of thousands of children have died and countless more are particularly at risk of cholera and other diseases because of drought and violence in East Africa,” the Associated Press/NPR notes (8/12).

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The United Nations has officially declared Somalia’s food crisis a famine in several parts of the country.

A boy drinks water from a pond in Bule Duba village in the outskirts of Moyale, near the edge of Oroma and Somali regions of Ethiopia, June 12, 2009. Prolonged drought, lack of water and limited pasture have led to conflict between the Somali and Borena ethnic groups in southern Ethiopia which left hundreds of people dead in February this year. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) says it needs some 100 million Swiss francs to prevent conflict, famine and epidemics as well as restore the livelihoods of 2.5 million people in the Horn of Africa. Picture taken June 12, 2009. REUTERS

The UN says consecutive droughts over the last few years in Somalia have created a famine in two regions of the south. It is now appealing for immediate action to keep the crisis from spreading to other parts of the region.

International aid agency Oxfam said, the UN announcing famine in parts of Somalia, the first in the region in the 21st century, must be an urgent wake up call to the rest of the world for greater action in East Africa.

Across Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, 12 million women, men and children are in dire need of food, clean water and basic sanitation, following two years of failed Read more…

Somalia pirates detained after Tuesday’s killings are being held on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. Photograph: Todd Cichonowicz/AP

Pirates in Somalia have said they are ferrying ammunition and men to the 30 hijacked vessels under their control, and threatened to kill more captives following the violent end to a hostage standoff that left four Americans dead.

The US military said that 15 Somali pirates detained after the killings on Tuesday could face trial in the United States. The pirates are being held on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise off East Africa. The FBI is investigating the killings of Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, of Seattle, and Jean and Scott Adam, of Los Angeles, who had made their home aboard their yacht Quest since December 2004.

Pirates hijacked the yacht last Friday and held the four hostage. When a US warship Read more…

Due to the current instability and uncertainty of the North Africa/ Middle East crisis, one is sure to expect that pirate activity will only increase dramatically. Keep your eyes on Bahrain, that is the key…

(Adds quotes from pirates in Somalia)

By Phillip Stewart

WASHINGTON Feb 22 (Reuters) – Pirates shot dead four American hostages on a yacht they had seized in the Arabian Sea, and a firefight left two pirates dead and 13 captured, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

The sequence of events was not immediately clear, but the U.S. military’s Central Command said the dead hostages were only discovered after U.S. forces responded to gunfire and boarded the pirated yacht, known as the Quest.

“As they responded to the gunfire, reaching and boarding the Quest, the forces discovered all four hostages had been shot by their captors,” the U.S. military’s Central Command said in a statement.

“Despite immediate steps to provide life-saving care, all four hostages ultimately died of their wounds.”

The military, which said the incident took place at about 1 a.m. EST/0600 GMT, had been monitoring the Quest since discovering it had been taken over by pirates for about three Read more…